The Coolest Movie Ending You Never Saw May Get New Life

“Little Shop of Horrors,” a quirky 1986 movie musical about a carnivorous plant from outer space, boasted one of the most outrageous endings ever cut from a motion picture. The theatrical version of the Oscar-nominated movie, which co-starred Rick Moranis, Bill Murray, and Steve Martin, featured a finish in which the hero, played by Moranis, electrocutes the killer plant and lives happily ever after with his girlfriend in the suburbs.

But in director Frank Oz’s original ending, the plant goes on a rampage, eats the hero and his girl, grows to dinosaur-like size, rampages through the city, and basically conquers the world. Test audiences hated that ending and so Oz cut it, even though it cost him a fortune to produce and ran for almost 30 minutes.

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